Microsoft unveils new AI-powered weather model, set to provide more accurate forecasts

In a bid to provide high-quality, accurate, and up-to-date cloud and precipitation forecasts and maps globally, Microsoft has announced its new AI weather model.

The new model, 4x bigger than the one previously employed, relies on data from both available satellites and radars. Detailing the changes in the new model, Microsoft’s official blog post reads,

The new model jointly predicts both satellite and simulated radar reflectivity, enabling its predictions to fill data availability gaps. Since the precipitation task is more important than the satellite prediction task, the radar channel was given 6X more weight in the training loss function than satellite channels.

Microsoft explained that precipitation nowcasting models previously relied on data from the radar to verify places receiving precipitation and then extrapolate it to identify how things would evolve. Microsoft’s new Satellite + Radar weather model is better in this aspect!

The new model shows great promise and has been found to deliver enhanced performance when evaluated using available base metrics, even during satellite outages, making it a more reliable option.

Against the prior baseline of radar-only predictions, Microsoft Start’s new model presents a marked improvement in F1-score. Additionally, it was observed that predicted satellite images score better than a persistence forecast after 15 minutes, meaning these predictions can be used when satellite outages last longer than 15 minutes.

The new model, also the latest addition to Weather from Microsoft Start inventory, is now fully integrated and more accurate information should be available to Windows 11, Windows 10, Microsoft Edge, and Bing users. Besides, its integration into Bing and the Microsoft Start mobile app is also complete.

Reports of an improved Microsoft Start weather model have been doing rounds since early this month!

What do you think about the latest weather model? Share with our readers in the comments section.